which they wish the legislature to modify, is to shut
our eyes to the feelings of the people, feelings which it will be
difficult and also dangerous to disregard. The very gist and point
of the whole claim of the tenants is that their moral right (as they
regard it) is as sacred, and ought to be as much protected by law, as
the landlords' legal right, and that it is a distinct grievance to a
man to be prevented from living in Ireland on that particular piece
of land on which he was born and bred, and which was occupied by his
ancestors before him.'

The whole drift of this history bears on this point. The policy of the
past must be reversed. The tenants must be rooted in the soil instead
of being rooted out. 'Improvement' must include the people as well
as the land, and agents must no longer be permitted to arrogate to
themselves the functions of Divine Providence.

'_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret._'

One of the best pamphlets on the Irish Land Question is by Mr. William
M'Combie, of Aberdeen. A practical farmer himself, his sagacity
has penetrated the vitals of the subject. His observations, while
travelling through the country last year, afford a remarkable
corroboration of the conclusions at which I have arrived. Of the new
method of 'regenerating Ireland,' he says:--

'In it the resources of the soil--to get the most possible out of it
by the most summary process--is the great object; the people are of
little or no account, save as they can be made use of to accomplish
this object. But, indeed, it is not alone by the promoters of the
grand culture that the people have been disregarded, but by Irish
landlords, generally, of both classes. By the improving landlords--who
are generally recent purchasers--they are regarded merely as
labourers; by the leave-alone landlords as rent-producers. The one
class have ejected the occupiers, the other have applied, harder and
harder, the screw, until the "good landlord"--the landlord almost
worshipped in Ireland at this hour--is the landlord who neither evicts
his tenants nor raises their rents. The consequences are inevitable,
and, over a large portion of the island, they are patent to every
eye--they obtrude themselves everywhere. The people are poor; they are
despondent, broken-spirited. In the south of Ireland decay is written
on every town. In the poorer parts you may see every fifth or sixth
house tenantless, roofless, allowed from year to year to moul